Monday, 26 January 2015

For our documentary we are looking at having a narrative over the top so that we can explain what is going on at the beginning and introduce characters with the voice over.

We are going to start with some facts and then we are going to introduce the characters one by one, We will then describe the student whilst showing their clips.

In the introduction we are going to add some facts and some information about the school and how it relates to the students we are following.

At the beginning of our documentary we are going to start with a clip at the gate, following through to the Sixth Form common room then through to the media block following Jade, we will then transition to Olly and lastly we will show clips of Tyler. With these clips we have blocked out the sound so that we can focus mainly on the voice over.

Narrator: Ravens Wood School in Bromley has about 1400 students, and we're going to look at the day in the life of three of our sixth formers.

Narrator: We followed Jade, a typical outgoing, sociable, hard working student.
Olly, doesn't enjoy school but gets his work done so he can enjoy his out of school activities.
And lastly Tyler, The schools Head Boy, sociable, passionate enthusiast, willing to help anyone.

(Inbetween names show a clip of each of those students around school.)

The narrative will only be used once at the beginning, this leaves us with the rest of the documentary to go with the interviews with the students where you will be able to hear clearly their answers.

We are going to ask their questions but going to show the questions at the bottom of the screen so that the viewer has an understanding on what the interviewee has just been asked.

10th October 2014
My original plan for my documentary was to use the schools head girl to base my documentary on, as Estelle (head girl) on how joining the school affected her and how she managed to find a way to make a impact on the school for her to become head girl. Unfortunately when asking Estelle she did not want to take part so I will go back to thinking of doing a life as a sixth former to see if there is any way of doing that.

20th October 2014
Today I showed my documentary idea to one of the other media teachers just to get their opinion on my documentary, I was told that adjusting the idea would be best or change the idea completely. I felt that because I had planned the documentary so much it would be a shame to chuck it all away and start all over again so I have stuck with the idea of "Life As A Sixth Former".

11th November 2014
Over the half term I have been looking at different ideas for my documentary. Originally I was working on my own as of today I have had Tom and Kieran join my group for extra help and ideas. I am now definitely stuck with the idea of doing life of a sixth former, this is going to involve watching a sixth former and how they are in the environment, how they work and how they interact with their friends throughout school. When interviewing them we will do it in the common room when it isn't busy and so you can have a good distinctive sound from the students and set the scene of where they are.

25th November 2014
The last week we have been getting all of our footage together so that we can edit our documentary properly so that with all the footage we have captured we can make our documentary into something interesting and something people want to watch.

2nd December 2014
Today we started editing our documentary and because we are starting to edit we need to make sure we have all the right clips that we need in order to be able to make the documentary as good as we can make it. Currently the documentary has potential but we need to make it as good as we can so that when we make our final adjustments we will be able to know exactly what we want to do so that it won't take as much time and it will be much easier.

15th December 2014
Today we filmed a bit more of Jade and Ollie because we felt we needed more following on them so that we could have more footage so that we would have more than enough clips to choose from for our editing.
After today of filming we have uploaded the footage on to the computers so that we could continue to edit our final bits of footage.

6th January 2015
We have started to add different clips to our editing so that we could make the documentary more interesting and so that we could add more information to the clips. We have decided that at the beginning that we will have a voice over to describe what the documentary is briefly about in order for the audience to get an idea.

14th January 2015
We are in our final bits of editing, today we went to re-shoot our clip of the school sign so that it is a clearer shot, we chose today because it wasn't as bright outside we knew that there wouldn't be a glare on the school sign.

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Narrative theory is how a film or story relates to each other, in the film Romeo and Juliette the theme was that there were rivalling families who are meant to hate each other but the two children fall in love. In Frozen the new Disney film, there is the point that Ana thinks that Hans is a hero, but it turns out he is a villain in the end. You have Olaf who is the magical snowman who risks his life to make sure that Ana doesn't freeze and die. The trolls are linked to the princess from when she needed there help from when she was younger.

Binary opposites are usually used in films to help the plots, they are also used in music videos as part of a narrative to reinforce song lyrics.

Levi Strauss - Binary Oppositions

The above picture shows some class work that we did on Binary Oppositions. The idea is that you can base a narrative around things that are opposites. The examples i found above are that in Romeo and Juliet Love and Hate are two large opposites that create the narrative and in World War Z two of the major themes are death and life.

Propp - Seven Spheres of Action

Propp came up with the idea that in plays and literature that you would have 7 different character types. A clear example of this is from the film Frozen where they have used 7 different main characters:

At the beginning of Parent Trap the stat of equilibrium is that the twins are living separately with individual parents. The disruption to that is when they meet at camp. The state of disruption is when the twins try to get their parents back together. The resolution is when they come up with the holiday so they can get the parents back together. The new equilibrium is them all living together as one big family.

Friday, 16 January 2015

For my final music video, I chose to do the video of "Survival - Eminem". With this I am now going to discuss Eminems Style and how it relates to his public image.

Eminem is an American rapper, record producer and Actor known as one of the most controversial and best selling acts of the 21st century. Eminem has had 8 number ones in over 20 different countries.

When following Eminem's music video "Survival" you can see that with what he wears is what i would associate a builder to wear on a building site which is baggy black trousers with pockets all down the sides and then a black top/hoodie with a tag necklace on.

With Eminem everyone knows who he is so he doesn't need to dress outrageously in his videos or make the surroundings of the video outrageous as he has made it in the industry and he has a lot of dedicated fans.

In this video "Survival", Eminem uses a lot of hand gestures which is very much to this day related to rap music. The gestures in rap music often mean something so sometimes you can relate the gestures in a meaning.

In Eminems other videos you can see that his outfit choice is very basic and he doesn't wear outrageously bright and loud colours he tends to just stick to neutral colours.

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Promotional- The purpose of the music video is to promote the video so that people will buy the song, the video will cause a reaction with the audience and people will start talking about it remember the song and people will start to buy it. The promotion of the song and video will be done by not only word of mouth but also by certain channels such as MTV where they show new videos 'future hits'. The music videos give a better understanding of the song to the audience as you often by watching the video understand the meaning of the video more than you did before. The artist has a picture that the song is sold with so you often find that the video is related to and when the customer buys the song you find that the song will be recognised by the picture or the video more than the artists name. The overall purpose of all of these points above is so the artist can promote the record company so that is how they make their money.Promoting an artist is also a big part of the promotion of songs and music videos as the artist needs to be known for them to make money themselves. If I was to use Psy as an example who wrote the song Gangnam Style, he posted his first video and got 1Million views on YouTube, he then went on to winning the MTV Europe Music Awards. For Psy his fame was down to the YouTube viewers and the public, if nobody watched the video he wouldn't be where he is now. With his fame it lead to possible collaborations with people like Justin Bieber. In the Gangnam video Psy promotes himself by wearing bright colours and using distinctive different outfits so you know clearly which one is him, in the video Psy also surrounded himself in a lot of girls and the men characters were even females dressed up as men. The dance is the most recognised bit of the whole video as after the video was released that was the most remembered bit of the video, if you were to ever see the dance being showed there you would know what song the dance is from. The places that Psy visited in the video is so many random places and is not just based in one place.

Extension of Income- Music videos can help to promote an artist even a long time after releasing the song or album has been released, some artists are recognised years later because of how memorable there music video was. For example a few years ago Ant and Dec on their TV show as a joke performed there song that they had released 10years ago. After performing it on there show they made it to number one by the next week and got over half a million views on there song so many years later after performing. This has happened to other artists but can sometimes make more money. Even Michael Jackson who passed away about 5years ago he still makes money with his songs which shows examples that they may be gone out of the public eye or not here any more but there music video will still be recognised in the public eye which makes people still recognise the song. In the Pj and Duncan video they used bright colours for both of them so that you could distinguish which one was which, the video was very rap based which showed that they were trying to be serious with all the hand gestures but it was a fun video that people remember. When they re-performed it on their TV show they then again were wearing colourful baggy clothes but you could tell my the lack of hand gestures that they were less serious than when they originally performed it. The dance from "Lets get ready to rumble" is also a very recognised dance.

Extension of Outlets - In the past media videos would be shown on TV including chart shows and music channels such as MTV. Labels work together to with MTV to make sure the music videos get played on the channel to increase sales of the song, this is only for certain artists and genres. You find that some channels can't always air the music video until a certain time as they are not appropriate, but you will often find that they can't be shown at all because the video is just not acceptable at all.Synergy - This is where different types of media work together, this can relate with a music artist releasing a new song and in their music video putting clips from a recent movie in, but also the movie using this artists song, this promotes the artists song in the film and the film in the artists music video. I am going to use Christina Perry for my example, her song "one thousand years" was used in the twilight film and in her music video she had clips of the movie in there, Christina Perry's video theme was so it would blend into the Twighlight theme of the dark skies and the secrecy of the area. Christina in the video wore a black feathery dress so it was plain and not to over the top. In the music video the clips are from during the day fading into her clips which are in the evening to show that its twilight.

Product placement is also a way for the record company and artist to generate income as the major label artists will certainly have product placement in their videos. Lady Gaga's telephone video had numerous product placements including diet coke, virgin mobile and plenty of fish dating site. This was not the first time that Lady Gaga's used product placement in her videos, she also used a various amount in her bad romance video.

Producers Strategies - VEVO have a partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. They host music videos on YouTube and use adverts at the start of each video to produce revenue. this is good for music companies as it allows them to regulate the online distribution of their music videos and make money from it. VEVO also have applications on many devices e.g. iPad. This allows many more people to access the content.Producers strategies have a big impact from YouTube views. In December 2012 record labels were stripped of 2billion video views. YouTube wants to combat 'black hat' view count-building techniques. this is when hackers artificially guid up the number of views or likes on a YouTube video - enabling them to make clips more popular than they really are and increase exposure on the site. The number of views are regarded as an unofficial world popular music chart.

Monday, 12 January 2015

1. Tell me about yourself...
My name is Olivia Griffiths, I am 25years old, I currently work for MUA ltd. I would say I am a very easy going person and easy to get on with. I have been working at MUA for 5years and have exceeded in growing my skills.

2.What are your key skills/strengths?
I would say that my key skills would be that i am good at not only the make up to set the mood but also recently trained to do FX make up which has gone pretty well.

3. What would you say your weaknesses are?
I would say that my weaknesses would be that i like to make sure everything is perfect before it goes out onto set so sometimes I would take a bit longer but would make sure the client is on set for the right time.

4. Why did you leave your last job?
I have left MUA because I feel that I would like to travel a lot with my job and be able to see more of the world and i feel that your company would be the best place for me and I think that the experience will develop my skills even more.

5. Why did you choose to apply for this job?
I chose to apply for this job because i feel that i would be able to develop my talent and knowledge of a make up artist and by working for your company develop my skills.

6. Tell me about a difficult scenario at work and how you dealt with it?
In my first year at MUA I was in a situation with a client where I was doing her make up and she decided at the end that she wanted it done differently and started screaming and shouted instead of reacting back I very calmly said to her not to worry i will start again as i feel that is my client isn't happy with the result i will make sure that i can do what ever i can do to make sure he/she is happy.

7. Tell me about an achievement of which you are proud of
After working for he company for 3years I was praised at the employee awards with the best developed make up artist in the company and as the company is so big i was so greatful to be recognised and to have been recognised for your passion is the best feeling.

8. Where do you see yourself in 5 years time
In 5years time i see myself maybe opening my own company for make up artists that will have a direct link with film makers and the make up artists can use the company as an agency.

9. What are your salary expectations?
Currently I am on £1,700 a month so I am intentionally leaving MUA so that my pay would upgrade.

10. What do you know about our organisation?
I know that the Al Jazeera organisation is an extremely successful organisation and that there employees are one of their main priorities which is one of the reasons i applied because i feel that this is a great attitude to your employees.

Thursday, 8 January 2015

Further to your advertisement for a Chief Make-Up Artist position on thedailymirror.co.uk, i should like to apply for this vacancy, and enclose my curriculum vitae for your consideration. I am very interested in this post as i believe that i have the right combination of relevant industry experience, Make Up Artist skills and knowledge to not only make me an ideal candidate, but also a real asset to your company.

For the past 5years I have worked for a well known Make Up Artist organisation, where I have gained a reputation for making right choices on key decisions about the right way of the art of the clients make up. My prior work experience has given me a strong sense of client service and a comprehensive understanding of the make up industry.

I am constantly maintaining an awareness of market trends in the make up industry, and monitoring what local competitors are doing, it keeps me in touch with the latest industry development of make up.

I consider myself to be a dedicated and dependable individual who possess excellent verbal communication and customer orientation skills.

I feel that your company is the type of organisation in which i would excel, and I am convinced that my background, experience and qualifications would make me a perfect fit for your vacancy. In closing I thank you for your time and consideration, and I hope to have the opportunity to discuss the opening with you in person.